Cinnamon Oil

Traditional Use

Primary Actions

• Warms the middle burner and dispels interior cold - Gui Pi You is used when cold obstructs the Spleen and Stomach, leading to abdominal pain, poor appetite, nausea, or loose stool that improves with warmth.
• Strengthens Stomach and Spleen Yang in concentrated aromatic form - the oil preparation is lighter, sharper, and more immediately dispersing than the crude bark decoction.
• Expels wind and opens the surface through aromatic warmth - traditional summaries extend its use to wind-cold or cold-damp lodged superficially while the middle burner is also chilled.
• Provides a concentrated warming external preparation - topical use is directed toward cold-pattern pain, localized chill, and stiff aching areas where a penetrating cinnamon preparation is preferred.

Secondary Actions

• Gui Pi You overlaps heavily with Rou Gui You and cassia bark oil terminology in trade, so the practical task is to recognize this as a cinnamon-bark oil preparation rather than a separate species-level herb.
• Because this is a concentrated volatile oil, it is substantially more irritating to tissues than crude Rou Gui or Gui Zhi and is less suitable for prolonged unsupervised use.

Classical References

• TCM-style summaries describe cinnamon-bark oil as pungent, sweet, and warm, with actions of expelling wind, strengthening the Stomach, and warming the Spleen and Stomach.
• Traditional usage treats the oil as a preparation-state derivative of cinnamon bark rather than a distinct medicinal species, so its direction remains warming, dispersing, and middle-jiao supporting.
• IDENTITY NOTE: this record is for the concentrated oil preparation Gui Pi You, not the crude bark herb Rou Gui or the twig herb Gui Zhi; they share source material but are not interchangeable drop-for-gram.